“... based on the life of Hutton’s grandfather, C.W. Post, to Jesse Lasky, who had just joined Fox as a producer. Lasky expected a brief treatment; what he got instead was the ‘most perfect script’ he had ever seen. ‘I felt that proceeding sans director and sans teammates,’ Sturges said later, ‘gave me an opportunity to show how I thought it ...”

“... the Lamprey family in Surfeit of Lampreys, published 25 years earlier. (‘God bless my soul!’ Fox said. ‘Your memory!’) Even in Last Ditch (1977), it turns out quite casually that Julia Pharamond was née Lamprey. ‘“I think long ago you met some of my relations.” “I believe I did,” said Alleyn.’But for ...”

“... Like many people​ who keep meaning to get round to things, William Henry Fox Talbot was disheartened to discover, early in 1839, that a rival had claimed credit for something he’d been experimenting with for years. On 7 January, it was announced to the Académie des Sciences in Paris that Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre had permanently fixed images created by light ...”

“... adventure for her. I seem to have been spared: restaurant clatter and the boomy voices of Fox News emanating from the big-screen TV at the bar, thank god, have clearly flooded out her hearing aids. Justice served too: Paris Hilton dragged shrieking back to jail after three days on the lam.My mother, 81 and widowed for 12 years, is ...”